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Writing Speculative Poetry

Writing Speculative Poetry

Writing poems beyond reality.

Sean Glatch
July 02, 2025

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Freewrite
Poem: “The Church at the Edge of Time” by Angela L …
Divinations
Prompt

Freewrite

The point of freewriting is to simply get your thoughts on the page. So do not try to be “good” or write “poetically.” Just write your thoughts as they come, keep your pen moving, and allow yourself to be imperfect, sloppy, redundant, or cliché if you need to be. Now is the time for ideas—we will turn those ideas into a first draft once we’re done freewriting.

Freewrite for 8-10 minutes. Imagine a world—a world other than this one. What would that world contain? Is it big or small? What are the rules of physics? Nature? What kinds of buildings are in this world? Who populates it? What purpose does it serve?

Imagine a world into language. Fill this world with rich imagery and, potentially, symbolism and metaphor—though those devices may simply emerge as you go.

Poem: “The Church at the Edge of Time” by Angela Liu

Retrieved from Strange Horizons.

Here, there’s a boy with a silver knife
that can’t remember his name
and the old man who tells him
to unzip his memories
knuckle by knuckle
lip to metal lip.

At the church, we take turns
reading the book of life, the words
needled through each page with blood-threads,
fingers dipped in soul wine,
the pastor is a woman
with small birds living in the hollows of her eyes.

Today, a mother sleeps
in a cemetery of rusted cars
dreaming of her own skeleton
and a man crawls on his stomach and elbows
across a field of blooming red poppies
because the bombs in his mind
never stopped falling.

In the church at the edge of time
there is a groove of light
where a small god burns old photos for warmth
and he won’t listen
unless the rusted gates are open
and the blood lights are on.

Today, there’s a coronation
and the vipers are in attendance
the telescope on the pyre swivels to the closest planet,
and the stars fall like chainsawed trees—
the king will tell you it’s the best day ever,
but pay attention:
the birds are still howling
at broken televisions, their shackles
only as tight as you imagine them.

The boy can always trade in his silver knife
for that old soiled Elmo plush
but in this church of everything
the boy is the knife
the knuckle
and the older man unzipping his memories
and he doesn’t see the seam
just under his lip and between his eyes
where the small god will creep in for a peek.

You can still change the ending.
Press the rewind button on the altar pyre,
and leave this palace of glass
for that gutted, roofless house next door—
You’ll find two slender birches growing inside
their branches reaching for something like light.

We can pretend to be those trees with no names
inching toward each other in spring snow

no one would ever know.

Divinations

I love this imaginative poem, an example of speculative poetry—a genre in the same vein as speculative fiction, in that departs from realism through the use of magical, futuristic, or otherwise non-realistic elements. (Think if sci-fi, fantasy, horror, or magical realism could be poetry.) (Which it can be!)

This poem is strung forward by its own imaginative threads, weaving a world out of possibility. I love how meaning and symbolism are generated simply through the act of world building. It’s the kind of work that only introduces more questions, but the questions alone make this an exciting world. Questions like:

What does it mean to unzip a memory?
Why does the pastor have birds in her eyes?
Consequently, what kind of religion is happening in this church? Who, or what, is being worshipped?
Who is the boy? Or, for that matter, the other recurring images—what are the birds, the old man, the small god, the silver knife?

The end of the poem jags so suddenly into the second person. Most of the poem is spent fleshing out this world—which is so foreign from the world I’m familiar with—so that, when the poem addresses “you”, I think, me?

And then a new world is built, something smaller, quieter, kinder.

We can pretend to be those trees with no names
inching toward each other in spring snow

no one would ever know.

These lines are just so tender. And I love that this is the only moment of rhyme in the poem: it’s as though the poem ends on harmony, or something like it, like two trees slowly converging to meet one another.

Read this poem to yourself a few times. What connections do you make in the poem’s images as you read it a second or third time? What ideas do you associate with those images? What is the story being told?

Speculation operates differently in poetry than it does in fiction. Speculative fiction often relies on genre tropes, and, if not those, it still seeks to understand something through the tools of narrative. Speculative poetry can certainly contain narrative, and if I pay close enough attention to Liu’s poem, I can suss out a kind of storyline: every person in this poem seems burdened by memory, torn between two symbols for the life they once lived, the life they never had. It feels like a poem at the border between life and death, or between one life and the next.

But also, what do I know? This poem invites mystery into it. I actively encourage you to interpret it differently than I do.

The point: speculative poetry uses the tools of poetry to invite wondering, magic, and alternate possibilities. It allows the poem to deviate from realism and discover something about the world through our imaginations and intuition. This poem is only one example of what that speculation can look like.

Where do you draw inspiration? Are there speculative novels or movies that inspire you? I recently wrote a poem inspired by the aesthetics of Twin Peaks, and I loved writing within that possibility, the way metaphors felt literal, as though imagined worlds were butting into the real one.

Maybe you could write a poem from the persona of a monster, creature, robot, or magical being? Or, are there alternate worlds you would like to build, that you would like your poems to inhabit? Maybe there are worlds that can only be built in poetry. Maybe poetry is a world unto its own.

Prompt

Write a speculative poem! The above insights are meant to generate ideas for you. If you’re looking for additional inspiration, I encourage you to borrow from the aesthetics of other shows, books, and media you love. Or, you can read the poetry catalog at Strange Horizons, which publishes speculative poetry.